Express underplays Prohibition amendment approval

You would think I’d be used to discovering the Express underplayed what, in hindsight, was a major historical event, but I’m still surprised on occasion.

With the Ed Burns Prohibition documentary showing on PBS, I thought I’d see about the local reaction to Texas’ approval of the amendment. San Antonio was a German brewers kind of town, after all.

On March 4, 1918, Texas became the 8th state to ratify the Constitutional amendment. It was signed by the Governor later that month and then became law in June. But no huge headlines. In fact, I had to dig through the stories and verify through other sources that the dates were correct.

The problem was that the Legislature passed what was called the Zone Law at the same time and it went into effect in April.

The Express reported on March 5 that this law kept “liquor away from the soldiers of the regular and National armies of the United States, from all Government military establishments and stations of whatever size and situation, and even from ship yards that are engaged in public work to help win the war.”

Texas voters approved a prohibition amendment to the state constitution in 1919, but parts of it were later deemed unconstitutional.

However, according to the Anti-Saloon Year Book, the amendment included a clause allowing the rest of the law to stand if that happened. “Almost all the saloons in…Texas…had already closed their doors as the result of the operation of the ten-mile zone law…” and the Attorney General used that clause to stop saloon keepers from opening back up.

An August 1933 Kerrville Mountain Sun article reported that “when Texas adopted Statewide prohibition in 1918, 11 counties in the State were wholly wet, and these counties automatically revert to that position [after the repeal of Prohibition] without local option elections. They are Bexar, Comal, Kendall, Guadalupe, Kinney, Lavaca, Harris, Fort Bend, Jim Hogg, Austin and Zapata.”